MUSIC PREFERENCES BY PERSONALITY TYPE

THOUGHTS BY NATHANIEL 6 MONTHS AGO 11 COMMENTS

For many of us, our taste in music is an integral part of our identity so much so
that, to a certain extent, what we listen to is who we are. The songs of our youth,
heard a thousand times, fill our headspace with stray lyrics and infectious grooves,
creating a filter for the way we see, hear, and understand the world from then on
out. And while some have a less conscious, more organic approach, others actively
draw boundaries between the music they accept and the music they deny and by
extension, the people associated with those musical cultures, as well.

The link between musical preferences and personality is so strong that many of us
feel a quick skim of ones iTunes folder, Spotify playlists, or record collection would
reveal a wealth of information about the owner, even if these supposed revelations
are distorted by the lens of our own inherent prejudices. A punk fan may instantly
dismiss someone with an extensive selection of country, assuming that possession
of such music all but guarantees a certain provincialism on the part of the
possessor. Of course, as with all stereotypes, hasty judgments are usually
wrongheaded genre, like ones personality type, is more a guide than a
straightjacket, and wisdom is more readily found in the hidden nuances than in the
broad strokes.

Nevertheless, though there are genre-bending outliers to be found in every category

of music, the general tendencies of each may cause certain personalities to
gravitate more readily towards particular genres, while being repelled by others.
Furthermore, as much as we might identify ourselves and classify one another by
our choice of genre, our preferred medium (MP3 player, laptop, car stereo) might be
just as telling.
The Son-Rise Program is different than - even opposite to - almost everything you've
been told to do to help your child. Most schools and therapists, too, are operating on
a deep misconception about what autism is and what works to treat it.

Traditional methods see autism as a disorder that is primarily behavioral (some

even have the word "behavior" in their name). They seek to eliminate or extinguish
unwanted behaviors and promote wanted behaviors through repetition, training,
and rewards.

With over 30 years of experience working with more than 25,000 parents, children,
and professionals from over 85 different countries, we understand that autism is, at
its core, a social relational disorder. Fundamentally, our children, regardless of
whether they are not yet verbal or have Asperger's Syndrome, have difficulty
connecting to, relating to, and communicating with others. Sure, our children may
have behaviors that look different, but these are symptoms, not causes, and trying
to stamp them out is not the answer.

The Son-Rise Program is an alternative autism treatment based upon the idea that
the children show us the way in, and then we show them the way out.

This means that, rather than trying for force our children to conform to a world that
they don't yet understand, we join them in their world first.

We have seen that children on the autism spectrum can:

Learn to speak, even if they've never spoken.

Experience real happiness, satisfaction, and love, even if they seem frustrated or
combative right now.
Have deep, meaningful, caring relationships with others, even though they may
have appeared disconnected for years.
Have fun, reciprocal conversations, even if they have a history of rigid
communication.
Make close friends, even if they don't start with the interest or the tools to do so.
Live a life that may include college, dates, sports, jobs, hobbies, travel,
girlfriends/boyfriends - regardless of how many of these life experiences their
parents have been told were simply not possible.
We do not put limits on the possibilities for your child.

We can help you to bring your child as far across the bridge from Autism to recovery
as possible. For some, this means complete recovery. For others, this means

improvements in their child's development, human connection, communication, skill

acquisition and quality of life far beyond what most would have ever predicted

We can provide help for Autism and teach you to:

Establish a warm, interactive rapport with your child.

Implement effective educational techniques.
Enable your child to move beyond repetitive stimming behaviors.
Move through challenging behaviors (such as tantrums or hitting).
Become a confident teacher and advocate for your child.
Motivate your child to learnand to enjoy learning.
Optimize your child's learning environment.
Jump-start speech and language development.
Relax and have funwithout giving up what you want for yourself and your child.
Recruit and train a team of volunteers and helpers.
Find a sense of peace and comfort with your child's present challenges.
Create and sustain an attitude of hope and optimism about your child's futu
1)

Law of Readiness:-

First primary law of learning, according to him, is the Law of Readiness or the Law
of Action Tendency, which means that learning takes place when an action
tendency is aroused through preparatory adjustment, set or attitude. Readiness
means a preparation of action. If one is not prepared to learn, learning cannot be
automatically instilled in him, for example, unless the typist, in order to learn typing
prepares himself to start, he would not make much progress in a lethargic &
unprepared manner.

2)

Law of Exercise:-

The second law of learning is the Law of Exercise, which means that drill or
practice helps in increasing efficiency and durability of learning and according to
Throndikes S-R Bond Theory, the connections are strengthened with trail or practice
and the connections are weakened when trial or practice is discontinued. The law of
exercise, therefore, is also understood as the law of use and disuse in which case
connections or bonds made in the brain cortex are weakened or loosened. Many
examples of this case are found in case of human learning. Learning to drive a
motor-car, typewriting, singing or memorizing a poem or a mathematical table, and
music etc. need exercise and repetition of various movements and actions many
times.

3)

Law of Effect:-

The third law is the Law of Effect, according to which the trial or steps leading to
satisfaction stamps in the bond or connection. Satisfying states lead to
consolidation and strengthening of the connection, whereas dis-satisfaction,
annoyance or pain lead to the weakening or stamping out of the connection. In fact,
the law of effect signifies that if the response satisfy the subject, they are learnt
and selected, while those which are not satisfying are eliminated. Teaching,
therefore, must be pleasing. The educator must obey the tastes and interests of his
pupils. In other words, greater the satisfaction stronger will be the motive to learn.
Thus, intensity is an important condition of law of effect.
1)
According to this theory the task can be started from the easier aspect
towards its difficult side. This approach will benefit the weaker and backward
children.
2)
A small child learns some skills through trial and error method only such as
sitting, standing, walking, running etc. In teaching also the child rectifies the writing
after commiting mistakes.
3)
In this theory more emphasis has been laid on motivation. Thus, before
starting teaching in the classroom the students should be properly motivated.
KEY CONCEPTS
People learn through observing others behavior, attitudes, and outcomes of those
behaviors[1]. Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling:
from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and
on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action. (Bandura).
Social learning theory explains human behavior in terms of continuous reciprocal
interaction between cognitive, behavioral, and environmental influences.

NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR EFFECTIVE MODELING

Attention various factors increase or decrease the amount of attention paid.
Includes distinctiveness, affective valence, prevalence, complexity, functional value.
Ones characteristics (e.g. sensory capacities, arousal level, perceptual set, past
reinforcement) affect attention.

Retention remembering what you paid attention to. Includes symbolic coding,
mental images, cognitive organization, symbolic rehearsal, motor rehearsal

Reproduction reproducing the image. Including physical capabilities, and selfobservation of reproduction.

Motivation having a good reason to imitate. Includes motives such as past (i.e.
traditional behaviorism), promised (imagined incentives) and vicarious (seeing and
recalling the reinforced model)

RECIPROCAL DETERMINISM
Bandura believed in reciprocal determinism, that is, the world and a persons
behavior cause each other, while behaviorism essentially states that ones
environment causes ones behavior[2], Bandura, who was studying adolescent
aggression, found this too simplistic, and so in addition he suggested that behavior
causes environment as well[3]. Later, Bandura soon considered personality as an
interaction between three components: the environment, behavior, and ones
psychological processes (ones ability to entertain images in minds and language).

Social learning theory has sometimes been called a bridge between behaviorist and
cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and
motivation. The theory is related to Vygotskys Social Development Theory and
Laves Situated Learning, which also emphasize the importance of social learning.
Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized: A New Model for Liberal Education
By: Robert J. Sternberg

In 1968, I was a highly motivated college student taking an introductory psychology

course. Having done poorly on IQ tests as a child, I wanted to figure out why my
scores were so low. Things did not go as I had hoped they would. I received a grade
of C in the course, and my professor commented to me that there was a famous
Sternberg in psychologyand that it was obvious there would not be another one. I
switched my major to math; but after failing the midterm exam in the introductory
course for math majors, I decided that, actually, a C looked pretty good, relatively
speaking.

A decade and a half later I was chairing the department at Yale in which the
professor who gave me that C was still teaching, and three and a half decades later
I found myself president of the American Psychological Association, the largest
association of psychologists in the world. I commented to the past president, a
Stanford professor, that it seemed to me ironic that the president of the
organization had received a C in introductory psychology. He gave me a look of
astonishment, and commented that he, too, had received a C in introductory
psychology.

The kind of experience I had in introductory psychology is by no means limited to

that course or even to psychology. Many low-level courses, graduate as well as
undergraduate, are taught in such a way that the goal seems to be nothing more
than the memorization of facts and concepts. In some schools, especially those with
large classes, virtually all testing is done in short-answer or multiple-choice format.
What is the problem?

I tell the story of my introductory psychology experience because it illustrates

something that, at some level, we all know. The skills people need to succeed in
their careers do not always closely resemble the skills needed to succeed in college
courses, especially introductory courses. Life rarely presents multiple-choice or
short-answer problems. As the report How Should Colleges Assess and Improve
Student Learning? (AAC&U 2008) makes clear, this is not merely my own personal
opinion: employers overwhelmingly reject multiple-choice tests and other traditional
instruments of assessment. Moreover, the competencies such tests measure are not
the ones employers value. What, then, are the skills they value? College Learning
for the New Global Century (AAC&U 2007) identifies a number of such skills,
including inquiry and analysis, ethical reasoning and action, and synthesis. In this
article, I try to boil down the rather long list of highly valued competencies into a set
of key skills needed for school and job success. I argue that these are the principal
skills that colleges need to develop in order to produce the active, educated
citizenry of the future.

The WICS model

The overall model for liberal education is called WICS, which is an acronym for
Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized. The basic idea is that citizens of
the world need creativity to form a vision of where they want to go and to cope with
change in the environment, analytical intelligence to ascertain whether their
creative ideas are good ones, practical intelligence to implement their ideas and to
persuade others of the value of those ideas, and wisdom in order to ensure that the
ideas will help achieve some ethically based common good, over the long and short
terms, rather than just what is good for them and their families and friends.

The WICS model differs from the traditional model for liberal education, which
emphasizes primarily memory and analytical skills. Traditional methods of teaching
as well as tests of conventional ability and achievement tend to emphasize stored
knowledge of facts and basic skills. Such knowledge and skills are important. One
cannot think creatively to go beyond what is known, for example, if one does not
have the knowledge to move forward. Similarly, one cannot apply what one knows if
one knows nothing. The problem is that stored knowledge can be inert and
essentially unusable. Analytical skills can help one evaluate existing ideas, but they
cannot help one come up with ideas of ones own; nor can they help one adjust to a
world that is changing rapidly and that leaves behind people who cannot flexibly
adapt to its shifting demands.

The risk of the traditional system is that it creates self-fulfilling prophecies, whereby
those who do not test well are not given full opportunities in college to succeed.
WICS is a framework that can help us get beyond self-fulfilling prophecies in
admissions, instruction, and assessment.

Admissions through WICS

Is it possible that many students who are not now being identified as having
impressive credentials for college or graduate work might, in fact, be so identified if
they were assessed in a way that looked at creative and practical, as well as
analytical, forms of skills? While at Yale, I led the Rainbow Project, a research study
that sought to answer this question (Sternberg and the Rainbow Project
Collaborators 2006). A wide variety of studies have shown the utility of the SAT as a
predictor of college success, especially as measured by grade point average. The
Rainbow measures were designed to supplement the SAT Reasoning Test, which

now measures reading, mathematical, and writing skills. (At the time of the study,
the writing component had not yet been added to the SAT.)

The Rainbow Project collected data at fifteen schools across the United States,
including eight four-year colleges, five community colleges, and two high schools.
The 1,013 student participants were, predominantly, in either their first year of
college or their final year of high school. Here, I discuss the analyses for the college
students alone, because they are the only participants for whom we had available
college performance data. The total number of participants included in these
analyses was 793.

Baseline measures of standardized test scores and high school grade point
averages were collected both to evaluate the predictive validity of current tools
used for college admission criteria and to provide a contrast for our current
measures. All Rainbow assessments were administered either in paper-and-pencil
format or via the World Wide Web. The measures of analytical skills were provided
by the SAT plus analytical items of our own invention. One, for example, required
students to figure out the meanings of neologisms from natural contextsa novel
word is embedded in a paragraph, and its meaning must be inferred from the
context. Other measures required students to complete series of numbers and
figural matrices.

We assessed creative skills by using both multiple-choice and open-ended

measures. In one open-ended task, students chose two from a list of unusual titles
The Octopuss Sneakers, for exampleand wrote a short story to fit each. In
another, they chose picture collages and orally told two stories based on them. And
in a third, they captioned cartoons chosen from among several provided as options.

We assessed practical skills by using both multiple-choice items and performancebased measures called situational-judgment inventories. In one of the latter, the
students were asked to respond to movies depicting situations that commonly
confront college studentsasking for a letter of recommendation from a professor
who shows through nonverbal cues that he does not recognize the student, for
example, or figuring out what to do after eating a meal and not having the money
to pay for it. A commonsense questionnaire presented everyday business
problems, such as being assigned to work with a coworker whom one cannot stand,
and a college-life questionnaire presented everyday college situations for which a
solution was required.

The new assessments provided very substantial reliability gains over traditional
measures. As predictors of freshman-year academic success, the Rainbow
assessments were twice as reliable as SAT scores alone. They were 50 percent more
reliable than SAT scores combined with high school grade point averages.

In addition to predicting success in college, an important goal of the study was to

develop measures that reduce racial and ethnic group differences in mean levels.
We found that our assessments did reduce racial and ethnic differences relative to
traditional assessments like the SAT. Although the group differences were not
eliminated entirely, our findings suggest that measures can be designed that reduce
racial and ethnic group differences on standardized tests, particularly for such
historically disadvantaged groups as black and Latino students. These findings may
also have implications for reducing adverse impact in college admissions.

In 2005, I moved from Yale University, where I was the IBM Professor of Psychology
and Education and the lead collaborator in the Rainbow Project, to Tufts University,
where I became dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Since Tufts strongly
emphasizes the role of active citizenship in education, it seemed to offer an ideal
setting within which to put into practice some of the ideas from the Rainbow Project.
Accordingly, Lee Coffin, the dean of undergraduate admissions, and I instituted the
Kaleidoscope Project, which represents an implementation of the Rainbow ideas, but
also goes beyond them to include in its assessment the construct of wisdom. Other
collaboratorsChristina Bonney, Liane Gabora, Linda Jarvin, and Tzur Karelitzhave
since joined the project.

Whereas in the Rainbow Project we used separate high-stakes tests to collect

student data, in the Kaleidoscope Project we used the college application. It just was
not practical to administer a separate high-stakes test, such as the Rainbow
assessment, for admission to a single university. So instead, to the application that
is prepared by the more than fifteen thousand students who seek admission each
year to the schools of arts, sciences, and engineering at Tufts, we added optional
questions designed to assess WICS. A creative question asked students to write
stories with titles such as The End of MTV or Confessions of a Middle-School
Bully. Another asked students what the world would be like if some historical event
had come out differentlyif Rosa Parks had given up her seat on the bus, for
example. Yet another creative question, a nonverbal one, gave students an
opportunity to design a new product or an advertisement for a new product. A
practical question queried how students had persuaded friends to accept an

unpopular idea, and a wisdom question asked how one of their passions could be
applied toward a common good. The advantage of the Kaleidoscope approach is
that it has gotten us away from the high-stakes testing situation in which students
must answer complex questions in very short amounts of time under incredible
pressure.

We found that Kaleidoscope scores correlated only minimally (0.1 or less) with the
SAT, and the kinds of racial and ethnic differences encountered on both the SAT and
the Rainbow assessments disappeared. This means that the Kaleidoscope scores
predicted less than 1 percent of the variance in SAT scores. Students who scored at
high levels on the Kaleidoscope assessment have shown increased participation in
extracurricular activities during their first year of college, relative to those who did
not score as high. Academically, these high-scoring students performed at levels
comparable to students who excelled in ways other than through Kaleidoscope,
such as in student government, musical, athletic, or other forms of high school
participation. Thus, the assessment provided a way of predicting leadership
involvement, independently of racial or ethnic group, and without any sacrifice in
academic skills. Such projects can be done at the graduate level as well. My
colleagues and I designed an admissions test for a large and highly rated business
school in the Midwest. We showed that we could increase prediction accuracy and
decrease both sex and ethnic group differences in admissions (Hedlund et al. 2006).

How does one assess answers to questions that seem so subjective? The
assessment is done using well-developed rubrics. For example, we assess analytical
responses based on the extent to which they are (a) analytically sound, (b)
balanced, (c) logical, and (d) organized. We assess creative responses on the basis
of how (a) original and (b) compelling they are, as well as on the basis of their (c)
appropriateness to the task with which the students were presented. We assess
practical responses on the basis of how feasible they are with respect to (a) time,
(b) place, (c) human and (d) material resources, and (e) how persuasive they are.
We assess wisdom-based responses on the extent to which they (a) promote a
common good by (b) balancing ones own interests with the interests of others as
well as with larger
interests, (c) over the long and short terms, through (d) the infusion of positive
(prosocial) ethical values.

Teaching and assessing for WICS

Can we teach for WICSthe kinds of skills and attitudes that really matter in life and
in jobs? Yes, there are many techniques that can be used to teach for WICS in any
subject-matter area and at any level. Our belief that we could have success in this
realm dates back to a study in which my collaborators and I tested over three
hundred high school students across the United States (Sternberg et al. 1999). The
test was designed to select students, based on their analytical, creative, and
practical abilities, for placement in sections of a college-level summer psychology
course. When we divided the students into groups, we noticed something
unexpected. Students in the high-analytical groupthat is, those who excelled in
the abilities measured by conventional testswere mostly white and middle class.
Many had previously been identified for other programs as gifted. Students in the
high-creative and high-practical groups were ethnically diverse, and many had
never before been identified as gifted.

The question, of course, was whether those identified as strong in creative or

practical abilities actually performed at high levels academically. The answer was
clear: when students were taught, at least some of the time, in a way that matched
their patterns of abilities, they excelled. In other words, the creatively and
practically oriented students did excel academically, so long as the way they were
taught matched, at least some of the time, the way they learned. Good teachers
use a variety of teaching methods to accommodate the diverse learning styles of
their students; any student taught in a way that is responsive to his or her pattern
of abilities can excel. After concluding this study, my colleagues and I went on to
show that teaching to diverse styles of learning does indeed improve achievement
relative to teaching that emphasizes just traditional memory-analytical patterns of
learning and thinking (Grigorenko, Jarvin, and Sternberg 2002; Sternberg,
Grigorenko, and Zhang 2008; Sternberg, Torff, and Grigorenko 1998).

I currently teach for WICS in a course on leadership in the Department of

Psychology at Tufts University. The course is open to undergraduates at all levels
and in all fields of specialization, and it has no prerequisites. The course involves a
textbook on leadership theories and research, as well as a book of case studies of
leadership and two books by leadership theorists on their own views on leadership.
Consider as well four additional features of the course.

First, in every class except the first and the last, a leader comes and speaks to the
students for about fifteen minutes on his or her leadership experiences. The leaders
come from all domains of life, including politics, finance, management, the arts,
sports, and religion. Then for an additional forty-five minutes, the class asks
questions of, and has a discussion with, the leader. Students interactions with the

leaders give them a chance to develop as well as to challenge their own beliefs
about leadership.

Second, every class except the last involves an active leadership exercise. For
example, in the first class, a shill joins the students and pretends to be one of them.
After I go through the syllabus, the shill challenges it and complains that it is
inadequate in a variety of ways. Students are amazed at the shills audacity. When
he finishes with his complaints, I thank him, and then note to the class that every
leader, sooner or later, confronts public challenges to his or her authority. The
question is not whether it will or will not happenit willbut rather how the leader
handles such challenges. Students divide themselves into three groups and then
simulate how they would handle public challenges. In another class, students have
to hire a dean. They divide themselves into three groups. One simulates the
formation of a vision statement, the second simulates a job interview, and the third
simulates a persuasion interview to entice the selected candidate to come. In
another class, students simulate how they would deal with an incompetent team
member. And in another, each of three groups formulates a proposal to improve the
university and then has to persuade the class, acting as funders, to fund their
project.

Third, students are required to complete both individual and group projects. For the
individual projects, the students apply leadership concepts to their own leadership
experiences as well as those of other leaders whom theyve interviewed. For the
group project, the students use course principles to analyze the leadership of a
major known leader (past choices have included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Kenneth
Lay).

Fourth, all exams are open-book, open-note. The idea is to convey to students that
leaders are leaders by virtue of their ability to apply what they know to leadership
activities. For example, the final exam presents the story of a leader, told from the
time she first undertook a leadership position to the time she considered leaving it,
and the students have to analyze her leadership performance at every step along
the way.
Executive Summary

This is your chance to grab the attention of the reader in the most concise and
informational summary you can muster. Never let this run over one page long. Also,
do not write this portion until after you have done everything else, all research, all

numbers crunched and the entire packet completed. (You can read about the full
business proposal template in this article.) Since this business is fairly new, the
executive summary will not be as detailed (with financial growth, charts and graphs)
as it would if it were already well-established.

Our mission is to provide a healthy and sustainable food option for our consumers.
As an organic and GMO-conscious business that practices zero-waste policies, we
not only feed our customers we educate them. Yampa Valley Naturals was founded
in 2012 by Maya Stone and Joseph Yebcavich. We are a home based business
seeking a permanent commercial location for retail and wholesale purposes. Our
products are organic treats such as breads, granolas, jams and mushrooms that
serve the population of the Yampa Valley and beyond. We are Colorado Proud
certified, part of the Main Street Chamber of Commerce and have all necessary
permits to operate legally within Routt County.

The founders of YVN have years of experience in running successful businesses,

overcoming difficult obstacles and advocating for the organic and GMO-free food
scene. Combined, Maya and Joseph have 10 years of mushroom growing, bread
baking and retail experience. Maya served on the city council in VA for sustainable
food committee and Joseph is a representative of the sustainability council in
Steamboat Springs, CO.

We are prepared to invest 50% of the total needed start-up funds. They are seeking
the final 50% of funding to meet our financial goals from Mountain West Bank and
interested angel investors. There is also a Kickstarter campaign active to aid us in
this process. We foresee Yampa Valley Naturals becoming a staple in the Steamboat
Springs community; to educate the public about the importance of local and organic
food; to provide cost effective healthy food options; and to develop partner
programs with Colorado Mountain College to enrich the Sustainability program and
further the local food goals of the valley.

To become an entrepreneur it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. You will reach
hurdles on your journey but you need to learn how to tactfully overcome them. This
entrepreneur training course can help you.

I. General Company Description

This section reviews your companys goals, objectives, and philosophy, as well as
goes over what the industry is like.

Company Goals and Objectives

Goals:

To be the leading organic and GMO-free food producer in Colorado

To have a store front with prepared food and products and food-to-order
To educate consumers about the current and future state of the food industry,
plants and their health benefits and
Objectives:

To obtain GMO-free certification

To obtain USDA 100% organic certification
To have three full-time employees with salary and benefits
To encourage local food swapping
Business Philosophy:

Sustainable, Local and Organic is our motto.

Sustainable, because its important to reduce our footprint on the fragile

environment by recycling, reusing and repurposing.
Local, because stimulating the local economy is good for you, good for me and good
for the other members of your community. It creates a healthy atmosphere for
thriving business and happy people.
Organic, because eating products that are pesticide and preservative free is crucial
to your health.

The phrase is also an acronym for SLO food which is a movement to counter the
ever-so-popular fast food world we live in. SLO food encompasses not only how your
food is grown and where you buy it, but where and how you enjoy it, too. SLO food
intends to remind people to just slow down. Food is meant to be enjoyed as a
cultural event not as just a means to survival.

Industry Description

The food industry is forever growing, changing and adapting to the demands of the
consumer. In recent years there has been an exponential growth in the organic food
market. Consumers are becoming more aware of what they are ingesting and how
important it is to choose preservative free and pesticide free products. The organic
industry is on the rise as sale trends show for 2012. According to the Nutrition
Business Journal, organic food sales in the United States have increased from
approximately $11 billion in 2004 to an estimated $27 billion in 2012. Furthermore,
according to the USDA Economic Research Service, organic food products are still
gaining ground in conventional supermarkets as well as natural foods markets, and
organic sales accounted for more than 3.5 percent of total U.S. food sales in 2012.
We anticipate this positive growth to continue in coming years.

II. Products and Services

Describe in depth your products or services in this part of the business proposal.
Dont be afraid to go into even further detail than our example below shows, based
on your specific industry. Include advantages and disadvantages you have over the
competition.

Description of Products/Services

We produce and package organic products for wholesale, retail, and foodservice.
These products include but are not limited to:

Granola
Granola Bars

Trail Mix
Fruit Butters
Herbs (Fresh/Dried)
Mushrooms (Fresh/Dried)
Pastries
Cookies
Muffins
Cereals
Nut Butters
Artisan Breads
Competitive Advantages/Disadvantages

Yampa Valley Naturals has a distinct advantage as a local organic foods producer.
We dedicate a tremendous amount of time to research to ensure the best organic,
GMO-free ingredients in all of our products. While not every product we sell is 100%
organic and 100% GMO-free we strive to be. This sets us apart from our
competitors as no other business in town produces sustainable, local and organic
packaged food.

Living in the Yampa Valley can have its setbacks in the agriculture and product
creation sector due to our rather remote and high-altitude location. Obtaining
certain ingredients is already problematic but we need to again dramatically narrow
our search to meet our high standards of organic and GMO-free ingredients.

III. Marketing Plan

First, include a section on economics here. Because this is drastically different for
every industry, we have not include an example here. However, here are some of
the questions you should seek to answer with your economics section:

What is the total size of your market?

Is there a current demand for your product?
What are the trends?
Is there growth opportunity?
Are there any barriers you face to being successful as a start-up?
Start-ups have a bit more of a challenge when writing the business plan. Improve
your chances of success by taking this business plan for start-ups course.

Next, include a section about customers. Identify your targeted customers, their
characteristics, and their geographic locations, otherwise known as their
demographics.

Customers

Our target customers range from young to old and they will primarily be residents of
Routt County, CO. Our products cater to the sweet tooth of kids, the health nut to
the diabetic elderly. There is one important theme here and that is: S.L.O.

Our most popular customer groups will most likely be Steamboat Springs residents
with at least a middle-range income. Typically these customers will be ecoconscious or health-conscious citizens and could very well be in the education,
health, or food sector.

You should also include a section on your competitors. List major competitors by
name in this section if possible.

Competition

Surprisingly, none. We have been unable to locate a company with similar values
and/or products located in the Yampa Valley. There are local farms that produce
fresh herbs, but this is only a small portion of our entire product inventory. Insofar,

we have seen no signs of local gourmet mushroom farmers or any local organic
foodservice companies. Restaurants in town primarily carry big name organic foods
in their shops and we intend to become the new local source for high-quality
organic products at the retail, wholesale and foodservice levels.

For a lot of Steamboat residents, locally produced foods are more appealing than
ones produced from corporations. At a talk held by the Yampa Valley Sustainability
Council in April entitled: Local Foods, speakers asked the approximately 100 Routt
County citizens what their idea of local was. The results were impressive. More
than 80% of the room considered local foods to be produced only in Colorado. Out
of that 80% almost half considered local to be only produced in the Western Slope
area which encompasses Steamboat Springs. These people are our target market
and we have no true competitors at this moment.

How will you get the work out to customers? Include this information in the next
section. You should include not just direct promotional strategies, but also branding
strategies and budget information.

Promotion

Currently we are relying heavily on word-of-mouth. Our business financial structure

right now cannot hold as many clients as we are receiving inquiries from which is
why we are seeking a loan. Once we are able to aptly expand our operations we
intend to use local print media (newspaper, other publications), social media, email,
flyers and our previous product exposure at local businesses.

Yampa Valley Naturals is reserved, yet hip, organic and sustainable, small town gig.
We like folk music, a good hike and nice glass of wine, were not hippies but were
considerate of our environment and those in it. We seek to portray a contemporary
and simultaneously back country feel with our products. They are sleek, yet cozy
and familiar yet exotic. If we manage to make our customers feel any of these then
we are on the right track.

Promotional Budget

Monthly spending really depends on our sales. We anticipate approximately 1

shipment of paper a month, 1 shipment of business cards every 6 months. Annually
this equals $630 a year. Our prices are comparable to a bit higher than our
competitors. After much research we have realized that because our products are
primarily made with organic, GMO-free and local ingredients. We do not have any
direct competitors in Steamboat Springs that produce and package their own
organic and local foods for sale.

We have already see our customers make their decision on the quality of our
product over the price. We initially had incredible affordable prices as we didnt
understand our market yet. We have driven the prices up considerably and have
actually seen an increase in our sales.

V. Sales Forecast

Use a sales forecast spreadsheet to prepare a monthbymonth projection. Here is

also a startup expenses worksheet to use.

Make sure that this information is extremely detailed and describes not just the
projection, but details about why youre predicting these sales and expenses. This
part will be most scrutinized by anyone considering giving you money.

VI. Operational Plan

Explain the daily operation of the business, its location, equipment, people,
processes, and surrounding environment.

Production

We are producing our products in our home kitchen currently. We intend on

producing all products on site once we obtain a certified commercial kitchen and
retail space. We plan to keep a tight rein on inventory by implementing monthly
inventory checks and will adjust our methods on a regular basis accordingly.

Location

We started off as a cottage kitchen business working out of our home kitchen. We
now operate out of a commercial kitchen in town, use our home mailing address as
our business location and our products are sold via events, farmers markets, third
party, and on our website.

Our ideal location is a small shop off of the main street. Oak Street, which runs
parallel to Lincoln Ave. (the main road) has great boutiques and unique shops that
would be a great fit for us. There is ample street parking and rent is cheaper.

Legal Environment

Yampa Valley Naturals has already obtained a city sales tax license, a state sales tax
license, a wholesale and retail manufacturer license and insurance through
Mountain West insurance agency. We have no trademarks and are unsure as to
zoning at this point as our location is still to be determined.

Personnel

Yampa Valley Naturals will be run by the founders, with a possibility of hiring one or
two part-time employees depending on business. We have factored in these
salaries into our forecasts. If we do bring on employees there will be extensive
training required to ensure that our product quality and customer service is always
consistent. Pay will begin at $12 an hour for part-time employees. We will not offer
health insurance.